Limiting Speed for NVMe SSD with ASUS Hyper M.2x4 Card?

[JohnSmith2]

I have an Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard, and I currently have a Western Digital WD_Black SN750 NVMe SSD in its M.2 slot as a boot drive. I do lots of video encoding of lossless 4K video files (40GB+) which is primarily disk bottlenecked. I am considering purchasing a 2TB NVMe SSD to help, but I have some questions.

 

I would like to continue to use my existing WD NVMe as a boot drive. My motherboard came with an Asus "Hyper M.2 x4" card that I could use for a second NVMe drive.

1. Are there certain kinds of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are not compatible with this motherboard (for example, Gen4)?
2. Are there certain kinds of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are not compatible with this Hyper M.2 x4 card?
3. Will the Hyper M.2 x4 card limit the transfer speeds compared to using the M.2 slot on the motherboard, or will read/write speeds be equivalent?
4. The PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_3 slots are occupied by GPUs, making PCIEX4_1 and PCIEX16_4 unavailable. The motherboard manual says that the M.2 socket on the motherboard shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_5 slot. Since the M.2 socket is only for the OS drive (occasional small random reads/writes as opposed to non-stop massive continuous reads/writes), I assume that wouldn't hinder the performance too much if I used the Hyper M.2 x4 card in the PCIEX16_5 slot. Am I correct in this assumption?

Here is a diagram of the motherboard PCI slots and other related info:

 

 

[NewMaxx]

Hyper requires bifurcation, might want to read up on that procedure for the board first.

[JohnSmith2]

15 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

Hyper requires bifurcation, might want to read up on that procedure for the board first.

Are you sure? Any time I'm researching that I'm only seeing it in reference to Hyper M.2 cards that can hold multiple SSDs. This card can only hold one. It also came with the motherboard. I was more concerned about its compatibility with certain kinds of SSDs.

 

[kokosnh]

I assume you have the 40 PCIe lanes CPU in it.

 

1) no, the PCI-e is backward compatible, so any NVMe SSD should just work. 

2) no, it's just PCI-e to M.2 adapter, it's not a controller, there's no microchips in it. so it will work with all M.2 NVMe SSD

3) if it's in PCI-e 3.0 x4 speed PCI-e slot, then no, it won't limit the transfer speeds

4) it mean that the bandwidth have to be split, or one of them have to be shut down. In 3.6.3 PCH Storage Configuration, it says that if PCIe_x16_5 in in x8 mode, the M.2 will be disable. and if the  PCIe_x16_5 in in x4 mode, the M.2 will be in x4 mode.

 

and yes, the Asus Hyper M.2 x4, just need the 4 lanes from PCIe_x16_5, so you are safe.

 

 

 

[kokosnh]

22 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

Hyper requires bifurcation

no, that one doesn't needs it.

 

The HYPER M.2 X16 CARD needs it. 

[NewMaxx]

Yes, I meant the ASUS Hyper with multiple NVMe sockets of course. Didn't catch the x4 as it's just a regular adapter.

[JohnSmith2]

22 hours ago, kokosnh said:

I assume you have the 40 PCIe lanes CPU in it.

 

1) no, the PCI-e is backward compatible, so any NVMe SSD should just work. 

2) no, it's just PCI-e to M.2 adapter, it's not a controller, there's no microchips in it. so it will work with all M.2 NVMe SSD

3) if it's in PCI-e 3.0 x4 speed PCI-e slot, then no, it won't limit the transfer speeds

4) it mean that the bandwidth have to be split, or one of them have to be shut down. In 3.6.3 PCH Storage Configuration, it says that if PCIe_x16_5 in in x8 mode, the M.2 will be disable. and if the  PCIe_x16_5 in in x4 mode, the M.2 will be in x4 mode.

 

and yes, the Asus Hyper M.2 x4, just need the 4 lanes from PCIe_x16_5, so you are safe.

 

 

 

Thanks. To make sure I understand correctly, what you're saying is that if I have the PCIe_x16_5 slot in x4 mode, then I could have an NVMe SSD in the motherboard's M.2 slot and another NVMe SSD in the Hyper M.2 x4 card in the PCIe_x16_5 slot without any performance bottlenecks, correct?

[kokosnh]

page 3-43 in instruction 

 

 

i assume you have 40 pcie lanes CPU

[kokosnh]

23 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

dual NVMe sockets of course.

it's quad M.2 NVMe socket, and to be honest, it's not like he really need bifurcation for it to work. even that HYPER M.2 X16 CARD would work, because he only need one SSD to work in it...

it's not worth it, but it will still work.

[NewMaxx]

Right, I meant dual if he intended to use x8 on that slot. (which is possible with a BIOS mod and the X16)

[JohnSmith2]

18 hours ago, kokosnh said:

page 3-43 in instruction 

 

 

i assume you have 40 pcie lanes CPU

Yes, it is 40 pcie lanes (5960x). So x4 mode does not limit the performance of an M2 NVMe SSD over x8, right?

[kokosnh]

if it's in x8 mode, then M.2 is disable. 

if it's in x4 mode, then M.2 is enable and at full x4 speed. (the M.2 is getting that 4 PCIe lanes fromn PCIe_x16_5 slot)

 

[JohnSmith2]

20 hours ago, kokosnh said:

if it's in x8 mode, then M.2 is disable. 

if it's in x4 mode, then M.2 is enable and at full x4 speed. (the M.2 is getting that 4 PCIe lanes fromn PCIe_x16_5 slot)

 

Are there any M.2 drives that require more than x4? Or is x4 good enough for all M.2 NVMe SSDs?

[kokosnh]

the max for M.2 key M is 4 PCI lanes.  There are some SSD that have 8 lanes, and 16 lanes, but they all are just PCI-e SSD, or PCI-e RAID card with couples of M.2 SSD. 

 

PCI-e 3.0 x4 is 32Gbps

PCI-e 4.0 x4 is 64Gbps 

That's fast enough